1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to fixing elements, and more specifically, to an interface card fixing member, which is applicable to a fixing bracket that is installed in a mechanical case of an electronic device, for fixing an interface card.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, an electronic device, such as a mainframe computer or an industry computer, has stand-up adapter cards installed on a motherboard, and a plurality of interface cards plugged into the stand-up adapter cards and therefore being parallel to the motherboard, so as to reduce the size and expand the functionalities of the motherboard. For example, a mainframe computer, such as a network server or an industry server, in order to enhance its functions and cope with its heavy duty workload, has to have varieties of interface cards, such as a sound card, display card, video capture card, graph card, video card, adapter, small computer system interface card, and peripheral component interconnect card, etc.
However, the interface card that parallelly plugged into the stand-up adapter card is easily to get loose if the plugging interference is the only clamping force, therefore a shaking situation brought out by processes of assembly, transportation, and others may cause the interface card of falling out, or getting loose, and may further make the electronic device incapable of operating normally. For this reason, the industry mostly fixes the stand-up adapter card to a fixing bracket, meanwhile, on each of the front and rear ends of the fixing bracket relative to the lateral sides of the interface card, installs a fixing element or a fixing structure to fix the interface cards, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2.
As shown in FIG. 1, which illustrates a fixing mechanism according to Taiwanese Patent No. M276240, the fixing mechanism comprises structures installed in a mechanical case 10, and a separate fixing element 14. The mechanical case 10 comprises a first board body 101 and a second board body 102. A flange 103 is formed on the first board body 101. A fixing plate 104 is formed on the flange 103. A magazine 1041 is formed on the fixing plate 104. A motherboard 11 having a plurality of sockets 110 is installed on the second board body 102. A plurality of add-on cassettes 12 that correspond to the sockets 110 are installed on the first board body 101. A hooking portion 121 is formed on the outside of the add-on cassettes 12. The sockets 110 are for insertion of interface cards 13. The interface card 13 has a blocking tab 131 installed for blocking the add-on cassettes 12. An axle 141 is formed on one end of the fixing element 14 and is pivotally connected to the mechanical case 10. A fixing portion 142 is formed on the other end of the fixing element 14.
However, the fixing element 14 is coordinately installed in the magazine 1041 by means of the axle 141 in order to pivotally connecting to the mechanical case 10, and in order to have the fixing element 14 press on the add-on cassettes 12 and thus fix the interface cards 13, it must make use of the fixing portion 142 that is located at the other end of the fixing element 14 to couple with the hooking portion 121. Therefore, the constructions of the fixing element 14 and the first board body 101 are complicated and the production cost is high as well.
Referring to FIG. 2, which illustrates an interface card fixing member 20 that is installed on a fixing bracket 30 according to another prior art, the interface card fixing member 20 comprises a coupling portion 201 for coupling to the fixing bracket 30, a fixing portion 203 for fixing an interface card, and an operation portion 205 for releasing the fixing portion 203. While installing the interface card, a user has to pull the operation portion 205 with one hand, and hold and plug the interface card into a socket of a motherboard with the hand; while unplugging the interface card, the user has to pull the operation portion 205 with one hand, and withdraw the interface card from the socket of the motherboard with the other hand.
However, since interface cards are not equal in length. For example, the length of an interface card for a server is approximately equal to the width of a host housing of the server. Therefore, it is not easy for a user to plug the interface card into the socket with only one hand.
Moreover, while plugging a plurality of interface cards into the sockets, user has to manipulate many interface cards at the same time, which requires a great deal of labor force, thus relatively increases the difficulty level in single hand operation. Therefore, this kind of prior art is inconvenient in application.
Hence, it is a highly urgent issue in the industry for how to provide a technique which provides a simple structure that is easy to plug in and unplug interface cards, thus can effectively solve the aforementioned drawbacks of the prior art.